Digital Influence Mapping Project

The Next Evolution of Social Media Measurement

What we do is different than advertising. It is different than traditional, narrowly-defined PR. It is different than direct. But what we do - word of mouth marketing using social media methods - must be comparable to the more established disciplines or our programs won't grow beyond enthusiast clients and "try-and-learn" scenarios.

There are those who believe that social media marketing initiatives should not be measured quantitatively. They must be measured that way. the problem is that we are all missing a "value" or a set of values that we can all agree on.

I started by saying that what we do is different.  Here's how:

• We activate third party word of mouth - neutral and positive mentions of a brand, experience, issue. Those mentions produce "impressions" that are more valuable than traditional display or search advertising because someone feels strongly enough about the topic to "relay" it along. WOM ranks higher in almost every measure of trust than advertising and media.
• Much of our work is more "engaging" than other means of communication or marketing. That means that people spend more time with it, often participate in some way and can become more "invested" in our experience due to that time and contribution they make. That is more valuable than simply "seeing" an ad or seeing that ad 5 times.
• Our programs offer deepening levels of participation and engagement. We have different approaches for different clients and different marketing challenges. And at the far end of the engagement scale, we can involve customers so deeply, so authentically, so personally that they become brand advocates or loyalists. All you have to do is look at Virginia Miracle's "Brands for a Weekend" thread to get that.
• Certain types of word of mouth programs can develop greater trust between a company and its customers. We exist in the nexus of marketing and communications - relevant to both brand marketer and corporate public relations practitioners.

All of this is hard to measure. Harder still is making it a predictive model - "If I just ad $10k more budget to my WOM program I get this..." But this year, we will see the next evolution of social media and word of mouth marketing measurement.

Attention

For us, that will start with an assesment of an "attention" factor - to what degree will you pay attention to a advertisement, media-mention, or word of mouth recommendation/mention for a certain product or service. All of the research on the broad category of WOM suggests that personal WOM commands more attention. Now we want to demonstrate that on a client-by-client basis. That will start to illustrate the greater value that WOM provides - over and above the value of advertising per se.

Next we need an ad equivalency model. I wish we didn't but based upon all of the conversations I have had with clients on the marketing side, we need that.

That leaves making WOM more predictive. Only experience will give us enough data and even then, the discipline will behave more like public relations - we can put all the best conditions in place to activate and amplify talk and it will either happen or it won't. Still with more complex case studies under our belt, we will continue to build a strong knowledge base of what works best.

A lot of folks are exploring measurement. Here are some interesting posts and resources:

Beth Kanter on Success Metrics for Non Profits

Jeremiah Owyang on Success Metrics

Krishna De on Measuring Success

WOMMA on Measurement and Metrics

What's your model?

 

Principles vs. Policy Driving Social Media & Business

We had an interesting experience yesterday as we were designing and executing a great social media program. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside as my folks created a really smart plan and began the engagement portion of the program. Then we ran into "policy."

Policies are put in place to help communicate within organizations. Big brand companies rely on them to communicate the "dos and don'ts" to a larger staff and reduce risk. Big established companies are just that - "established." They have firm foundations in place to protect an often sizeable value - the brand and the business. They need to keep a lot of people on the same page. Think of CPGs with rotating brand owners. Or even standard workforce churn. Polcies help tell everyone what they can do to get their job done. They are necessary. They can even help us do our jobs sometimes.

So I was struck by an atypical article in my one of my favorite sources - mashable - about public relations.

Principles over Policies

The problem is that things are changing too fast for entrenched policies. New technologies crop up all the time. New ways to engage customers that just might lead to better relationships, loyalty and revenue. Brands want to engage on social networks, in blogs, microblogging even. They want to partner with Pandora, Blogher, blip.tv and all the next guys that crop up (and will be covered in mashable).

"The only constant is change."  We hear it in keynote after keynote and may roll our eyes but in many respects it is true.

We need to change our approach to policy. In every company. We need to implement a "dynamic approach to policy" where any business leader, brand manager, marketer can instantly challenge a "policy" to get a waiver or a change such that they can innovate and by doing so evolve policy and behavior forward in an organization.

Do Not Do This

Which brings me back to mashable. Mark Hopkins writes about Amy at ShapingYouth.org challenging Target on the image above. The model's midsection sits squarely in the crosshairs. (one of the inherent challenges with the Target logo). Target's response (published in the Consumerist) smacks of "policy:"

“Good Morning Amy,

Thank you for contacting Target; unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest.

Once again thank you for your interest, and have a nice day.”

This is an old, stale policy. The moment the committee agreed on this approach to consumer generated media (aka 'those bloggers'), the policy was outdated, irrelevant and perhaps, even dangerous. I know there are super-smart marketers in Target. No doubt they will change this policy of communicating to consumers who have a valuable voice online as they see the benefits of engaging with their publics via social media.

But what they really need to do - we all need to do - is adopt the "dynamic approach to policy." Create a mechanism to challenge any policy and grease the wheels for innovation. Let's spend more time communicating 'principles' within our organizations and preparing our business leaders to make decisions driven by those fundamentals. Let's create a fllexible mechanism for ever-changing policy.

Will this make more work inside the legal and corporate policy centers? Probably. But I would argue not to require significant headcount in that "must-be-lean-for-Wall-Street" corporate HQ. Will it improve business via revenue and staff retention? Yes. 

A Health Social Network With No Professionals...

Social media amplifies everyones' voice. In many cases, it has broken the dominance of traditional media and corporate communicators by empowering "citizen journalists" to break stories and challenge the traditional headlines. Moms can connect with each other and get advice versus relying on the "experts" annointed by publishing houses and media companies.

But health is one of those areas where we may bemoan the tyranny of traditional medicine and the special interest influence of pharmaceutical and insurance providers, but I still can't diagnose a major illness never mind treat it. I rely on a doctor. (regretably as mine is such an old-school, "stop-your-whining"- kind of doctor).

iMedix just won the Crunchies for Best New Startup 2007. This is annointed them by the social media tech community from the Valley (I am guessing here as there were 0ver 122K votes cast to determine the winners) where the emphasis is on "tech" and venture capital. It is not a hotbed of medical innovation.

At it's heart, iMedix is a social network for people who want to talk with other people about common conditions and health interests. If I have thyroid cancer (I don't but do have a related thyroid thingee), I can type it into their super-simple interface and recieve simple web search results from prefered, brand name sources (are they "scraping?") and a number of people who have tagged themselves as interested in 'thyroid' or 'thyroid cancer.'

Now, I will admit that I am a bit curious about what the crowd makes of this weird phenomena of thyroid malfunction. I am suspicious of some environmental condition that will reveal itself someday (my wife, myself and our cat all suffer from a related condition). Still, why would I reach out to these people?

The iMedix social network has a lot of things going for it and most of those are in the simplicity of the interface, the function and the overall ease of use. It stands as a strong testament to the strengths of a Web 2.0 mindset. Still many services are trying a social network model for healthcare issues. Some, like Revolution Health mix community content and features with professional information from trusted brands like Cleaveland Clinic, Mayoclinic.com and others. There are even "doctor bloggers'. Inspire, formerly Clinicahealth, goes a different direction by offering a social network platform to those that share a condition and want to connect with each other. It might be the Preemie social network or the Diet and Fitness community at Discovery Health.

iMedix is a broader social network driven by a front-end search interface that drives you to people who have tagged a common interest. We don't know much about each other. The service is new and most profiles are half-baked or not baked at all. Mine included. I am just not sure how much of my health interests I want to put on my profile beyond the one I have shared in this post.

Problems with iMedix:

• The management team is all tech VC and start-up folks. Not a single health professional or pyschologist.
• No clear way to assign credibility to different members. I could easily get a bunch of hooey from folks with no repercussions to the service or that member.
• The homepage is a big stock photo. Don't these startups know that stock photography telegraphs - "don't trust us, we are creating an image here."
• The dominant member (or does he work there?), Sean, appears to be represented by a wonderfully attractive...stock photo! Remember the Macwarehouse catalogs in the nineties that featured thumbnails of their customer service people that were laughably stock images? - "Hi! I'm Gretchen. Call me." Well, it's not funny when I am suffering from a condition and you want me to trust you.
• There is no critical mass of members. Right now, the service seems stocked with test accounts and staff members.

I like the technical and user experience. But that's not a good enough reason to give it the best startup award (the awards were user-voted). We'll see if they get past the weaknesses mentioned above to unlock a truly powerful health social network. To do, they will have to probably partner with some of the more trusted information providers. It's not likely enough to aggregate their search results.

Will they change? Or does iMedix just want to flip the company? Or worse, are they struck by tech hubris that won't let them see through to these weaknesses enough to fix them?

Non-invasive Social Media Strategies

Also known as superficial strategies, "toe-in-the-water", strategies-that-remind-me-of-advertising, not-rooted-in-organizational-behavior strategies, and a-less-risky-strategy. It is kind of like non-invasive surgery - no big impact on the patient, easier decision to make, less change. I am talking about the two fundamental ways that businesses and brands can plan and execute word of mouth programs online that leverage aspects of social media.

One way is to embrace the changes that go along with a culture of conversation with your customers and stakeholders.

The other way is to look at digital word of mouth (WOM) as just another channel and try to figure out how to weave it into your media or communications plan.

A lot has been written about the first way. Many social media evangelists including ourselves have waxed poetic about the business and karmic benefits of authentic conversation and an earnest interest in customers/stakeholders/employees as people. (Far fewer of these evangelists offer any credible measurement model. They often just speak about "getting it" and criticize those who don't. It is critical that we all get very disciplined about measurement and reporting impact to have our arguments hit home in favor of the "one way")

Brands who embrace their fans fall into this category. While part of me wishes this path was for everyone, it's really not. Microsoft, Harley Davidson, Nintendo, LEGO, Intel, Dell and others have all done this, no matter how imperfectly.

The other way
Many brands and businesses want to take advantage of social media - influencer outreach, activation of networks or communities and radical visibility - to fill out their marcom plan. They are not ready, or maybe even suitable for organizational change. They need to launch a product, boost sales this quarter, or demonstrate that they are innovative. We see this with many consumer package goods companies (CPGs). They are sales machines. Often their brand leadership is transitory at best. The brand managers move from brand to brand within the organization as they conquer challenges. Short term gains - those that get measured in no more than a season or a year - are the key driver.

Examples of the "other way:"

• contests that solicit user generated content for some marketing purpose -i.e. submit your photo to win, submit your video to be part of a commercial, submit an essay to win.
• Brand Facebook pages without an outreach or community strategy - basically just a beachhead with no plans to go further inland.
• Viral video attempts
• Many ideas that leverage social media channels but without the conversation or intent to do much more with the consumer generated ideas/content.

Experiementation with the other way, which treats digital WOM as a "channel" breeds an interesting pressure. One that I actually believe is good for Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) as an emerging fresh discipline. One that could help the "one way" (I mean the fisrt example I gavce above, not that there is only one way to do it

Unintended Trojan Horse(s)
The "other way", the way of the experimenter who may not be committed or even fully aware of the potential benefits of WOMM, does three important things:

1. It let's brand marketers try some of the techniques of social media and activating WOM before going any deeper - a move that might require business or organizational change that just won't happen at the brand marketing level.

2. "Light experimentation" is shared across the organization, across brands in a typical multi-brand universe. The stories of social media success spread through the halls pretty quick. This pushes the learning across more brand teams.

3. It forces a measurement discipline on WOMM. These marketers live and die by KPIs (key performance indicators). If the WOMM effort doesn't compare well to their advertising or PR metrics, it's going to be hard to repeat 3 times (sometimes institutional memory is short in a multi-brand marketer just due to the churn of brand leadership and teams)

What's the downside?

Simple. This less-committed approach, can lead to trying shortcuts around best practices in WOM. Many best practices require a different way of thinking of marketing and the benefit of building relationships with customers. Shortcuts can lead to program "underperformance" and a perceived sense of failure. E.g. "social media didn't move the needle as much as my online advertising"

Both ways exist. Both ways are valid. Both ways are here regardless of what WOM purists would prefer. (they would prefer the "one way").

Can we inject enough best practices into these less intrusive experiments to make more CMO's and more brand managers believers in the bigger potantial of WOM to transform their business?

 

A Real Attention Crash

Much has been written about the scarcity of attention in a time of abundant (read: flood, torrent, downpour of toads) information. There is the book, The Economics of Attention; Steve Rubel's post/meme,  The Attention Crash; and my favorite post summarizing the issue from John Hagel:

"attention economics starts with the observation that, as products and information proliferate, attention becomes the scarce resource – we each have only 24 hours in the day.  Where we choose to allocate this attention will increasingly determine who creates economic value and who destroys economic value."

Nowhere is that challenge made as life and death as in driving. We have done a lot of social marketing work around the problems of "Distracted Driving." Teens and new inexperienced drivers are hardest hit. In fact, Distratcted Driving - cell phone usage, changing CDs, eating, putting on makeup, etc... - is the number one killer of teens.

As my kids are approaching driving age (t-minus 3 years on Boy 13), and as I consider their particular media habits, I believe I have good cause to worry. There is more to do in the car. And young drivers are more at risk simply because they lack experience. So, in today's Post, we see that Virginia is considering a ban on texting while driving. Forget about the realities that these type of bans take (cell phone "restrictions" on youth in the state can only be enforced if the driver is stopped for something else), nowhere is UNDIVIDED attention more critical than in driving. Okay, brain surgery, firefighting, flying a jet are also pretty intense, but for most of us, driving is a daily routine. And you never know what the other knucklehead is going to do. I grew up on "defensive driving" - what a terrific social marketing story.

In a previous post, I tallied my kids current media habits. When they are ready to drive, those habits will likely migrate to new electronic behaviors. None of them should happen while driving in a car. The simple story is that any distraction robs us of our undivided attention on our driving and the others on the road.

So, what has desktop information overload have to do with connectivity behind the dashboard? Our ability to bounce between tasks on the computer gives us a false confidence that we can certainly do the same in something as industrial and pre-information age as the cockpit of a car. We cannot. Our attention is limited and scarce. And it is physically dangerous to divide it or "bounce" between tasks that are not road-related.

I am starting on a new series on New Media Literacy. What it takes to understand the new media defined in the broadest of terms - blogs, microblogging, co-created content, messaging, etc... Clearly my intent is focused on how we interpret and filter information. I am always interested in what I call digital influence - how we are all influenced in new ways by digitally-based innovations. And there is this aspect - how mobility of always-available information can actually impact our safety.

It's not an academic question when I look at my children and their friends.

A window into BlogHaus at CES

Take a look at our buddies, Podtech's, Mogulus implementation for CES. As per previous years, they are running an "off-campus" house for all of the bloggers at CES. Our guys will be out there with Intel. It's fun watching the live feed.

My Private Digital Focus Group

I read a great post by Fred Wilson over at A VC. He reflected on his kids (3) media behaviors as an imperfect yet still insightful barometer of trends. Sure it's not a great sample but his observations are still quite meaningful.

I look at my own tribe and what they do everyday. They are 10 and 13 so, they haven't advanced to too much independent consumption (buying DVDs, CDs, indpendent movie-going). Still, I look at the average week and find some interesting habits. But before I catalogue their consumption, here's what I make of it:

Digital Trends: The Bell Report

Personal devices - phones and portable game players - will grow in importance. My kids want their tech with them wherever and whenever. They will prefer these smaller devices over the larger user experiences available to them. I am guessing they feel a more intimate ownership of these devices. I may laugh at all the add-on services that Sprint tries to jam into our phones but I think mobile devices will be big. And not just phones.

TV shows are "filler" for them (this is different than what Fred finds with his children - who are older). They like movies equally well on the TV or in the theater. The drama of movies really does it for them. So there is probably a good future in great writing.

Music remains a passion. Whether on CD or downloaded MP3 files - it just doesn't matter. The appetite for music will not go away. How it's sold doesn't really matter to this next generation. 

They consume books like they grew on trees (which they sorta do). Both read a tremendous amount. Boy also like comic books like Judge Dredd (a classic). Girl has not really discovered magazines yet. Newspapers and magazines are on the ropes.

Tweens are not diving into social networks as vigorously as teens. Now, this might just be my kids as I am sure others are hip deep in MySpace. I am guessing that in a couple of years this will change and they will both have a sophisticated online presence.

The data is in the details:

Each are given 1.5 hours of digital or screen time a day. That includes TV, computer and Wii (we have become a Nintendo-loyal house). Boy (13) does about 1/2 Computer, 1/4 Wii, 1/4 TV. He routinely sneaks in some TV later at night with us but rarely pushes for any particular programming. Girl (10) splits it between TV and Computer.

Computer Games

Boy is a big PC Gamer and can spend hours with his friends either in the room or online playing multiplayer games - e.g. Rome Total War and Star Wars Empire At War (not necessarily MMORPG, although he's begging for WOW). Online he browses YouTube and game sites like Next Level.

Girl spends most of her computer time in various online sites like TY Girls (think WebKinz for dolls), Miniclip (games), and an occaisional friend-recommended site.

Email

Surprisingly, neither is deeply committed to email. Boy uses his everyday in a fairly utliitarian way. Girl has all but abandoned hers. I expect this to change.

Mobile

Only boy has a phone. He uses it routinely as his buddies have phones. He relies on the phone for most communications. We get charged for texting so we had to strangle that at the beginning. Otherwise, he would text all the time.

TV, Movies & Video

Girl watches Disney shows - the live action ones and re-runs of Full House. She also likes Project Runway, American Idol and America's Next Top Model. Boy would like to watch Family Guy and the Simpsons. He has a serious thing for MythBusters and Hell's Kitchen. Both still watch movies (DVD and pay-per-view). Both go to movies several times a month. I don't see much difference in their going to see movies at theaters vs. on teh TV at home. They seem equally interested in both.

Game Platforms

We have had a Wii for about a year and it remains Boy's favorite platform...alongside the DS, that is. He actually seems just as interested in the DS. Girl now has DS but steers clear of the Wii (that's HIS).

Books

Boy reads 1-2 books a week. He re-reads The Zombie Survival Guide all the time. Girl reads 2-3 books simultaneously and has a thing for Nancy Drew.

Magazines & Newspapers

Both read the comics but otherwise the newspaper is useless to them. Boy will read Nintendo Power. Girl has not tuned into magazines yet.

Great looking digital trends report from Contagious

Contagious Magazine has released a great 2007 trend report round-up. It covers not just some big digital developments but other cultural.marketing trends from retail to landmarks. And did I mention that it actually looks great?

I didn't learn a whole lot of new names or ideas that I hadn't already experienced throughout the year, but it is still a great collection. It has a european POV as Contagious is based in London. One good example of something I wasn't tracking was the mobile service Blyk:

"Blyk

The birth of Blyk has fulfilled two prophecies, the first of which is the prediction by 80's ad execs that TV, radio and (had they known about it) internet as well would be substituted by one all-encompassing portable box, through which all our media-related needs would be met.

By creating a mobile phone network which is free for young consumers and paid for by advertising, Blyk has also fulfilled the second prophecy made by Contagious quite some time ago – that the future of advertising lies in 'branded utility'. Let us explain – in order to make the branded messages on Blyk engaging and relevant rather than intrusive, it utilises a complex engine which filters the feed according to each user's personal profile. 

These advanced targeting techniques have been a big draw for major brands, with Buena Vista, Coca-Cola, i-Play, L'Oreal Paris, StepStone and Yell.com all on board for the launch. Blyk offers useful, relevant and entertaining services rather than brash, traditional marketing messages, and also a major advantage. Would you rather pay for calls and texts? YES/NO. If targeted correctly, the ads feel more like conversations, invitations and welcome information."

You can get the full beautiful pdf here >